Hornstein and his partner Shawn Frayne recently teamed up to build the Solar Pocket Factory, a machine that produces small solar panels that could provide primary power for 100 million people worldwide. The Solar Pocket Factory project was supported by over a thousand backers on Kickstarter, making it one of the first crowdfunded advances in clean technology. Alex's latest project is called TinyPipes: building smart, web-enabled solar panels that can be quickly deployed to form a solar electricity grid in rural areas with poor infrastructure.